Moose Lodge Plan Draws Foes

October 18, 1989|By Katherine Scobey.

Two local businessmen are planning to buy the Moose lodge in

unincorporated Addison Township where they want to open a banquet hall, but the venture is meeting resistance from neighbors and Du Page County officials. The crux of the opposition lies in a zoning change sought by the investors, George Makris of Oak Brook and Anthony Montalbano of Westmont. They have asked Du Page County to rezone the property for general business use from single-family residential zoning.

The Moose lodge, situated on 12 acres southeast of Wood Dale, is bordered on three sides by woods and houses, and by Ill. Hwy. 83 on the east.

At a Du Page County Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on the request Monday, members of the board and neighboring homeowners invoked the specter of shopping malls and car dealerships, saying they feared the consequences of rezoning the property.

``If B-2 (general business zoning) is granted, what happens when the owner is tired of using it as a banquet facility? It`s wide open for any of these uses,`` said board member Harold Pletcher, of Lisle Township, referring to the 117 possible uses that fall into the B-2 zoning classification.

Some board members and homeowners indicated that they would be satisfied with allowing the investors to run a banquet hall under a use variation, which would prohibit any other business activity and would retain the residential zoning of the property.

``I`d rather see this than multifamily housing, a shopping center, or off-track betting,`` one man said.

Another homeowner, however, opposed the banquet hall altogether, saying,

``We are a unique little country area. We pay high taxes for the privilege and should be allowed to remain that way.``

The Zoning Board is scheduled to vote on the rezoning request Nov. 2. The vote will be an advisory recommendation to the Du Page County Board.

The lodge was built by the Greater Chicago Moose Lodge No. 3 in 1976, according to Angelo Giliberto, a past governor of the organization. Du Page County zoning laws allowed the lodge to run the facility as a permitted use in a residential zone, said Jeff Harris, a planner in the county development department.

In its heydey, the lodge hosted Saturday night dances and myriad banquets and dinners for 12,000 members. But as membership thinned to about 4,000, the big building became too expensive to maintain.

The Moose members are looking for a smaller building and are hoping to sell the lodge to Makris and Montalbano, Giliberto said.

But the investors` decision to ask for business zoning instead of a use variation may prove to be a stumbling block. The investors don`t want a use variation because it would give the county the ability to restrict liquor service beyond the normal limits imposed by liquor licensing, said Patrick Bond, an attorney for the investors.